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THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: an
open letter to the domestic violence and sexual assault community
From Irene Weiser, Executive Director, Stop
Family Violence
March 2004
Published in July/August 2004 Sexual Assault Report, Vol. 7, Number 6,
pp 81.
(author’s note
June, 2006: this essay was written in 2004, as our nation was first seeing
the emergence of state legislation to outlaw all abortion, even in cases
of rape or incest. In early 2006, after 2 conservative judicial appointments
to the US Supreme Court, South Dakota became the first state to pass a
law banning all abortions, and they are readying for a Supreme Court battle.
Louisiana is the second state to pass such legislation, though theirs
will only take effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. At least 11 other
states have similar legislation pending)
When I started Stop Family Violence four years ago I hadn’t given
any thought to SFV’s organizational position on reproductive rights
and the turmoil around girls’ and women’s access to contraceptives
and abortion. While I certainly have my personal opinions about it, I
hadn’t seen the issue as central to SFV’s mission, and frankly,
I didn’t want to get into the whole tangle of it. By default then,
avoidance became our organizational position.
Recent events have caused me to rethink that stance, however –and
it has been a radical rethinking. I now see the issue of abortion as fundamentally
an issue of violence against women – as a subset under the VAW umbrella
just as domestic violence and sexual assault are, and with surprisingly
similar dynamics. Below I describe the current events that have served
as my wake-up call, as well as the evolution of my thinking.
Prohibiting
Women’s Access to Emergency Contraception and Abortion
I don’t know how many of you
are aware that there is an organized effort underway to prohibit women’s
legal access to emergency contraception and abortion even in situations
of rape or incest. This effort asserted itself this past March in both
South Dakota and Tennessee. In Tennessee a state constitutional amendment
was proposed to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest;
even to protect the life of the mother. Though they believed they had
enough votes for passage, the legislation was quickly withdrawn because
legislators didn’t want their votes on such a controversial bill
to be on record during an election year.
 In South Dakota it was a much
closer call. A bill to make abortions illegal in cases of rape or incest,
though still providing an exception to protect the health of the mother,
passed both the House and the Senate and was on its way to the governor’s
desk to be signed. The governor made some technical changes to the bill
and sent it back to the legislature for quick reconfirmation on the last
day of the legislative session. By an odd twist of fate, the technical
revisions failed by a vote of 17-18 and so the bill did not pass. Some
legislators indicated they voted against the final bill because it did
not go far enough; they wanted to see a bill banning all abortions, even
when the mother’s life or health was at risk.
The vote in South Dakota stunned me; outraged me – the thought that
a 14 year old girl whose father forced her to have sex with him would
now be forced by the government to carry his baby to term - or that the
government would demand that of any rape victim – is shockingly
calloused and obscene.
I thought first about the victim and the incomprehensible suffering she
would be forced to endure as she carried and bore a baby conceived by
rape. Then I thought about rape itself – how fundamentally the act
of rape consists in the loss of bodily autonomy; that somebody else by
force or coercion takes control over the victim’s body and forces
her to do something with her body that is against her will.
And that thought gave me pause. Isn’t that what the government would
be doing too - using force or coercion to require the rape victim to do
something with her body – maintain a pregnancy - that is (potentially)
against her will? And then I wondered, doesn’t the same right to
bodily autonomy exist for all pregnant women, whether or not they were
raped? In denying any woman the choice to do with her body as she pleases
– including the choice of abortion – wouldn’t the government,
like the rapist, be robbing the woman of her bodily autonomy?
Autonomy: the fundamental human
right to freedom, choice and
self-determination.
The essence of abuse is the denial
of autonomy. As victim advocates and activists we fight every day for
the preservation, restoration and respect for this most basic human right.
So why do our organizations hesitate to take a stand for women’s
autonomy when it comes to the issue of abortion?
Ah, yes, the fetus-baby – that obviously living yet not independently
viable, already-almost life-form. It is a struggle to know how to speak
of it, no less to determine what rights to accord it, and therein lies
the difficulty.
For some, based on their religious or other deeply held beliefs, there
is no moral or linguistic ambiguity – it is a baby, entitled to
life. For others its status and its entitlements are far less clear and
the question revolves around planned/wanted pregnancy versus forced maternity.
No doubt we each have our own opinions on this, as do our clients and
our board members, and when faced with our own life circumstances we would
make our own individual choices.
But our organizational position must be based on principle, not on individual
opinions and beliefs. What, then, is to be the position of our organizations?
I suggest that there is only one answer consistent with our mission to
end violence against women, and that is to take a strong and unwavering
stand for a woman’s bodily autonomy; her right to decide for herself
at all times what happens to her body.
Organizationally we cannot compromise on this position lest we find ourselves
on a slippery slope. We should be no more willing to say the government
is entitled to decide what a woman must do with her body under certain
circumstances than we would be willing to say a rapist is entitled to
a woman’s body under certain conditions. The right to bodily autonomy
and self-determination is pervasive and absolute. 
Yet how does an organization respond to critics who argue that the “right
to life” should be the overarching principle that the organization
upholds? I respond by asking this – How does one weigh the rights
of an unborn, pre-viable fetus as compared to the rights and entitlements
of a living human woman?
To uphold the fetus’s rights
over the woman’s rights can only be done by requiring the woman
to compromise her bodily autonomy – to give up her own freedom,
choices and right to self-determination in order to maintain the pregnancy.
Why should the unborn, pre-viable fetus’ life be valued more than
the woman’s? The demand for a fetus’ right-to-life over the
rights of a woman is a demand for women’s subjugation to the fetus
and to the State. Married women faced similar subjugation under the law
when their spouse’s raped them with impunity. Our whole movement
worked very hard to change this and to emancipate women from this servitude.
Why do we balk on this matter then?
Forcing
Pregnancy: A form of bodily assault
It is an unprecedented social expectation
to demand a woman subjugate her rights to the fetus’ rights. Indeed,
we don’t even demand parents subjugate their rights on behalf of
a living child. For example, it is not illegal for a parent to decide
to keep his/her kidneys even though doing so may cost their ailing child,
in need of a kidney transplant, its life. The ailing child’s right-to-life
does not trump its parent’s right to bodily autonomy – the
parent has an absolute right to decide whether to donate a kidney or not,
even if the ailing child may die as a result of that decision. Indeed
if a physician were to forcibly strap the parent to the operating table,
incise his/her body and remove a kidney without consent, it would be viewed
as an outrageous bodily assault.
Given that society would never require anyone to compromise their bodily
autonomy even to save the life of a living, breathing autonomous child,
the government has no right to make such a demand of a woman towards a
living, but not yet independently viable fetus. Indeed we should regard
any attempt by the government to enforce a pregnancy against the mother’s
will as a form of bodily assault.
The denial of women’s autonomy is the essence of violence against
women. The effect is to render her dependant and subservient, either to
individual men or the State. Hence, to deprive a woman of bodily autonomy
is to deny her equality. The lack of equality is at the root of all abuse
– one cannot exert power and control over an equal; denial of equality
is a pre-condition for abuse to occur. Thus for the government to usurp
a woman’s autonomy with regard to her reproductive freedoms simultaneously
is an act of abuse and establishes the pre-conditions for abuse to continue.
When the government sets limits on women’s reproductive freedoms
it is saying, in effect, that a woman does not have the absolute and final
say in what happens to her body. It is not just saying it – it is
codifying it in law - law that sets the standards and expresses the values
of our society. How can we ever begin to end violence against women if
the laws of our society will not even guarantee the most fundamental of
human rights to women – to say at all times, under all circumstances,
what we allow to happen to our bodies?
Same
Tactics Used By Abusers
That the attempt to limit women’s
reproductive self-determination is a form of violence against women can
readily be seen in the tactics used by those who oppose women’s
right to choose. For example, anti-choice activists use the same tactics
as batterers - –verbal harassment, shaming, intimidation, stalking,
threats and actual use of violence – to achieve their goals.
Yet, as with other forms of violence against women, its the rhetoric that
is the most insidious and the most damaging. Some anti-choice rhetoric
has become commonly, if uncritically, accepted. For example, many people
have commented that a woman gives up her right to choose when she chooses
 to have unprotected sex. Such
a comment has strong parallels to the hostile, victim-blaming comments
that we so often hear in our work with women who are victims of violence.
One can almost hear the disparagement, the unspoken “slut”
“whore” - blaming the woman for her presumed irresponsible
if not immoral behavior – and then punishing her, as if to say,
you made your bed, now lie in it. Yet we know from our work with victims
of violence that to shame and stigmatize and blame the individual is to
ignore the social/political context of oppression that gives rise to the
circumstances in the first place.
The comment “a woman gives up her right to choose when she chooses
to have unprotected sex” is remarkably similar to the kind of comment
that we hear in the domestic violence field that “She gave up her
right to complain about him hitting her when she decided to stay with
him.” To those who don’t understand the larger social/political
factors that contribute to a woman’s decision, such a comment –
blaming the individual woman for her choices and actions - could seem
legitimate.
But those of us in the field understand that her decision to stay is not
an indication of a character weakness. Instead we understand that her
decision is based on a complex variety of social-political factors ranging
from her beliefs about a woman’s duty to her husband to the very
real fears for her safety and economic survival given that neither law
enforcement nor social systems provide adequately for a woman who is fleeing
violence. We are able to see her decision to stay not as an individual
or moral failing, but as a failure of the social-political context which
provides neither the vision nor the means for women to live strong, independent
lives.
The
Larger Context
Unintended pregnancies
and abortions don’t happen in a social-political vacuum either.
It is indeed a telling sign of a larger context of women’s oppression
that the highest rate of unintended pregnancies, the highest rate of abortion
and the highest rate of relationship violence all occur in the same populations:
predominantly poor, disproportionately black, Hispanic and Native American
women ages 17-24 – women who have the fewest financial resources
and the least access to quality health care, education, contraception
and justice. It is telling too that the majority of teenagers who become
 pregnant
were physically or sexually abused as children. And that the men who impregnate
these young women are typically several years older and often coerce them
into having sex without birth control, and that all too often these men
grew up in homes where they were victims of or witnesses to family violence.
And what of the fact that physical abuse often begins or is exacerbated
when a woman becomes pregnant? Anti-choice activists say that violence
during pregnancy often occurs because the man wants the woman to get an
abortion while the woman wants to keep the baby. Even this is indicative
of men’s desire to control/limit women’s bodily autonomy.
The argument “a woman gave up her right to choose when she chose
to have unprotected sex” fails to recognize the context in which
unintended pregnancies occur. Once that context is understood, such an
argument is no more compelling than the argument that the rape victim
gives up her right to say no when she wears a short skirt. The right to
bodily autonomy does not come and go with the circumstances, it is an
absolute. Just as a woman has the right to assert her bodily autonomy
by saying “No” at any point during the sexual act, no matter
how much she drinks or how she is dressed, a woman should have the right
to assert her bodily autonomy at any point in her pregnancy regardless
of the circumstances under which she became pregnant. (As to the fetus’
right to bodily autonomy – until such point as it is viable, it
is quite literally non-autonomous and hence has no such rights.)
Women’s
Priorities
In June 2003, the Center for Advancement
of Women, directed by Faye Wattleton, former director of Planned Parenthood
Federation of America, published a study surveying women’s attitudes
about the most important issues facing women today. The study indicated
that 92% of American women consider violence against women to be a top
priority, whereas only 41% considered keeping abortion legal to be a top
concern. Hooray, I thought, as I read the news a year ago – our
issue has made it to the top.
That is not my reaction today, however.
Today, I understand we can no longer afford to operate as though issues
of women’s reproductive freedom have no direct relation to our work
on violence against women. There is no our issue/their issue dichotomy.
It is the same issue: the denial of women’s reproductive rights
and freedoms is another form of societal oppression and violence against
women.
It is time that our organizations stand up and make that connection explicit.
It is time because what almost happened in South Dakota and Tennessee
is only the beginning. Right now, there are moves underway to make all
abortion illegal in Michigan, Georgia, Iowa, Oklahoma, West Virginia and
Kentucky – even in cases of rape or incest; even if the woman’s
health is at risk.
Our organizations must take a stand now for women’s absolute right
to bodily autonomy under all circumstances. Neither the government, nor
the church, nor husbands, physicians or fathers should be entitled to
force a woman to do something with her body that is against her will –
not any more entitled than a rapist is. We can no longer stay out of the
fray. The loss of reproductive rights is nothing less than the legalization
of violence against women. Our silence will cost women – not just
women seeking abortion, but all women – their lives.
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Irene Weiser is founder and director of Stop Family Violence, an online
grassroots activist organization whose mission is to organize and amplify
our nation’s collective voice against all forms of violence against
women and children. Visit Stop Family Violence at www.stopfamilyviolence.org
to join the movement, stay informed and get involved! Contact Irene at
irene@stopfamilyviolence.org
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